Source for blue steel sheet metal

A roofing and metal specialist friend has a request for a kitchen stove hood made from blue steel. I think 20 ga. or so would be satisfactory. The finish should be similar to the blue steel stovepipes that used to be commonly available. Any suggested sources in the South-East would be appreciated.

Jim Williams

im not sure if your talking about something like a gun-metal blue or the like, but if thats the case your not going to find sheetmetal with it already on. the fabrication would scratch it anyways. build the hood out of cold rolled and have it black oxided (blued) by a finishing shop that does hot black oxide

What about stove pipe it"s blue

Don't know where you might find the material, but he needs to make it clear to the customer that this thing WILL rust, just to protect himself. Salt, etc that gets airborne during cooking will have it looking pretty bad in short order. The blue finish doesn't really provide any appreciable protection.

He might call Jerry Wilson at Specialty Steel in Greenville. Jerry has been in the metal business a long time and knows a lot of sources for oddball stuff. His number is 864-299-8771

I am betting you wont find a source for this- I think the blueing done on cheapo single wall stove pipe is done in house by the stove pipe manufacturer.
I have never seen it for sale anywhere in sheet form, and I look for that kind of stuff.

I would consider using Galvaneal, with a thin semitransparent coat of paint shot on it- you should be able to get some paint that will take the heat- hoods dont get very hot, not more than 150 degrees or so at max.
Galvaneal is an electrically galvanized steel, so it doesnt have the big shiny spangles that regular galvanized has, it is a uniform gray surface, and it takes paint well. Since it is galvanized, it wont rust.
Sign makers use it a lot, I have bought it from larger sheet metal suppliers, in 4x10's, in 16 thru about 24 ga.
Its nice to work with, and the paint sticks, unlike regular galvy.

I would make it out of black iron sheet metal and have it powder coated. They have a million colors now, i am sure you can match one pretty good. Don't use galvanized it reacts to the pickling process they use....Bob
http://www.metalmasterfab.com/

I know the type of sheet metal wanted for that range hood. The same material was used for cylinder jackets and enclosures on stationary & marine steam engines. It had a "bright blued finish". Typically, it was used to finish off and enclose things like engine cylinders, as well as to enclose crankcases on open-crankshaft engines. Steam turbines often had jacketing made of it as well. It was often assembled using nickel-lated steel strips and round-head screws. the blued finish ranged from a deep "gun blue" to almost a gray, depending on manufacturer. I have seen alot of this type of steel as jacketing on stationary engines and turbines.

That type of blued sheet metal had a special finish that hasn;t been equalled since. I think the last time the stuff was commercially available in the USA in sheets was the 1950's- that was the last time any engine or steam turbine manufacturers were ordering it.

Nowadays, people restoring steam engines occasionally go looking for this same blued-finish sheet steel to replace old cylinder jackets. Over time, the old blued steel jacketing on steam engines and plant equipment inevitably got damaged. Most often, it would begin to rust, and some plant crews would wind up painting it. Sometimes, it rusted thru from wet insulation that it jacketed, or it got hacked and damaged during repairs to the equipment. Sooner or later, the old blued steel jacketing took a beating and got replaced with plain painted sheetmetal in many plants. I don;t think anyone has yet found a replacement for this type of sheet metal. I believe the trade name for it was "Russian Iron". I also believe the sheet metal was described as having a "planished" finish and being oil-blued.

I have "oil blued" some parts, a method known to blacksmiths and oldtimers. No way would that method work on sheet metal. The "oil bluing" referred to for this sheet metal was some more complex process done at the mills. It was likely part of a chain of steps which included some finish-rolling or "planishing" to insure the sheets were straight and flat when done.

No way will any paint or powder coat finishing begin to look like the original material. The finish was pretty much equivalent to a "hot blueing" job on a gun barrel. In service on steam engines, the finish would rust. The stationary engineers usually had their crews wipe down the engine jackets with oily waste (kind of unravelled cotton fabric that was sold in bundles for engine room wiping materials).

To duplicate the finish today would be a challenge. I think if a person had enough money, they could first fabricate all the sheet metal parts out of plain steel. Then, the parts would have to be polished up to remove any tool marks or burrs. Lastly, the sheet metal could then be hot-blued. This would require building bluing tanks to accomodate the parts, and getting burners and hot bluing solution enough to dunk the parts into. After that, a clear powder coating might be a good choice to keep the bluing from getting damaged by "rust blooms".

My late father managed to get some ready blued sheet steel for cladding the cylinder block on our Fowler B6 road locomotive.
That was around 20 years ago, but I remember seeing the full 8' x 4' sheet of it in the workshop, sorry I cannot find out where it came from but it was definately available then.

Phil UK

Joe Michaels and Phil pretty much described the stuff we are looking for. It looks to be heat blueing on a thin gauge steel with a pretty good grade of finish. The completed hood will have to be protected with some sort of clear finish to prevent rust. One of his customers has apparently seen such a standard hood and wants to do a custom hood for a specific application. Her designers drawings specify blue steel. The customer emphasized that she did not want a painted finish. Handling the stuff in doing the metal work would require a lot of care to prevent finish damage. I expect that such stuff is protected by an adhesive paper, or some other protective layer.

Thanks to all,

Jim

Jim -

If your customer is at all receptive to any other material, solid copper might be a good alternative. Easily worked and soldered. Easy to heat tint using a rosebud heating head on an oxy-fuel torch. As expensive as copper is, the cost would be less than building huge blueing tanks and filling them with massive quantities of blueing salts.

I've accidentally gotten the blue finish when I've built polished steel parts that were later exposed to moderately high temperatures. I have built some ovens for the hot caps of stirling engines that now have a beautiful blue finish after being exposed to the heat of an alcohol flame.

You'd be pioneering here, but if there were some way to polish sheet steel, fabricate the hood, and then place it in a large oven at 500°, or so, you might be able to get the desired color.

Of course, you'd need to have access to a large oven; and, some experimentation with time and temperatures would have to be done, first.

If you went this route, the steel would have to be scrupulously cleaned and free of all finger prints. Otherwise, the finished product will not have a uniform color and the fingerprints will stick out like a sore thumb.

The reason I suggest fabrication, first, is because the blue color is very thin and fragile. Handling during fabrication is more than likely to scratch it.

Regards,

Orrin

I still dont believe this stuff has been made in the US for at least 30 years- but if somebody actually saw a hood made from it, you need to track that back- find out where the hood is, who made it, and then call them and find out where they got the metal.
Because it is one closely guarded secret.
I have been doing fancy sheet metal objects for picky architects since the late 70's, and this finish, along with black speckel enamel with white spots, are the two holy grails of the architect and designer- which they never find.

Like Joe Michaels, I have seen the blue sheet metal quite a bit, of course not lately.

The term Russia Iron got me to thinking. Maybe they still make that kind of sheet metal in Eastern Europe or Asia.

I believe that many of the products that we hold to be obsolete in the USA are still made and traded in other countries.

I am definately not trying to be a wise guy here, but I'll bet that Russia Iron is still being made in Russia. I wouldn't be at all surprised, after all Russia is a very, very good source for vacuum tubes.

You could rust blue plain steel metal;rust bluing was used on old firearms like Lugers and double barrel shotgun barrels.Brownell's should have the rust bluing solution and the somewhat tedious process that it involves.

Thanks guys,

Looks as if the stuff simply isn't reasonably exsistent anymore. My friend specializes in copper architectural details and does fantastic copper fabrications. It's just he has this picky customer who has a certain look she wants. We will try to track back to determine if she actually saw a blue steel hood or just dreamed it. Sometimes I am glad that I am retired.

Jim

As far as I can tell, the so called "russian iron" was a sheet steel, manufactured in Russia, in the 19th century, which had, due to their process, a particularly nice, even gray mill scale finish.
It was not really blue, but just grayish.
http://www.narrowgauge.iform.com.au/russian-iron.html

If you read the report, this finish was the result of the limited technology of the time- the steel was brushed with a fir broom, sprinkled with charcoal, and then wrapped up in packets and wacked with a huge trip hammer. I doubt even in Russia they still make steel this way.

The blue stuff most of us think of is cheap stove pipe, which I think is probably a finish they put on cold rolled steel, not the natural color of the steel.
And since it is illegal most places to use single wall stove pipe anyway, my guess is that there is very little of that being made now anyway. Most of the single wall stove pipe I have seen in the last 20 years has been black, not blue.

I think you could easily make this finish by using either cold rolled or galvaneal, and spraying a transparent wash coat of tinted clear. When they say they dont want paint, they indicate they dont really know what they are talking about- as except for stainless steel hoods, every stove hood made, including copper ones, has some kind of painted finish on it, even if it is just a clear coat.

I have done a lot of work for rich people, as I lived in LA for 10 years, and they often get these silly ideas in their heads, which bear no resemblance to reality. Sometimes they can be talked down, sometimes they can be redirected, and other times you just have to tell em that its flat out impossible. Usually they will find somebody else who will lie to em, and tell em what they want to hear, then do it the way you would have done it after all, or fake it with paint. Often times imported european stuff is sold with completely misleading, or outright false stories as to what it is or how it was made- and then they want you to replicate, by hand, and in a quantity of one, something that was mass produced in a computerised factory. Then they want you to beat the price, as well.

Jim,
I'm wondering if what she saw may have been a hood that was clad with thin anodized aluminum sheet. It can be dyed to about any color imaginable as a part of the anodizing process.

When we were in the contracting business we furnished and installed quite a few hoods in commercial kitchens. Had one job where the owner was furnishing their own hood because they could get it so much cheaper than what we had priced per the specs (16ga 304SS construction). When the damn thing arrived on the job, it was actually welded up (poorly) from galvanized, and then had a skin applied to the exterior surfaces using about 30ga SS. Didn't leave a whole lot of questions about why it was cheaper than the specified item

I would make it out of black iron sheet metal and have it powder coated. They have a million colors now, i am sure you can match one pretty good. Don't use galvanized it reacts to the pickling process they use....Bob

Click to expand...

are you saying not to powder coat galvaneal, the last place i worked alot of the parts we powdercoated were galvaneal and never had a problem with the cleaning process, but we were using a 3 stage phosphate cleaning system, maybe theres other processes that are different?

.........A bright heat blue. Kinda like this:


Of course some of the depth and brightness is lost in the photo.

Rick

I don't know about galvaneal, but the fasteners (zinc, galvanized) caused lots of problems for my guy. He also uses a 3 step system. So now i acid wash the parts before i weld them together, removes the coating. No more problems...Bob